


I Can't Afford to Lose You

by AugustStories



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Emotionally Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Episode: s08e08 Hunteri Heroici, Guilty Castiel (Supernatural), POV Dean Winchester, Post-Episode: s08e08, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam is literally sleeping throughout this entire piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 01:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19285237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustStories/pseuds/AugustStories
Summary: In the aftermath of Cas' confession and an exhausting case Dean contemplates what Cas means to him and what losing him would mean.





	I Can't Afford to Lose You

**Author's Note:**

> Hunteri Heroici is one of my favourite Supernatural Episodes and I've so long wanted to write something for it and tonight I finally found the courage.
> 
> This can be seen as pre-Destiel but also completely platonic Cas&Dean.
> 
> I know that this has an open ending but I just had had this idea spooking my mind for a long while and wanted to finally write it down and my still new writing mindset says finished things have to get posted immediately. I don't think I will come back to write more that follows this up directly but there might be more Supernatural Oneshots coming as the SPN Summer Rewatch continues.

"Because if I see what Heaven's become, what I... what I made of it... I'm afraid I might kill myself."

Dean laid awake the night after they had solved the cartoon case, Sam long since deep asleep in the other bed, limbs sprawled everywhere, sometimes twitching in his dreams. Dean hoped they were pleasant dreams, someone deserved to get a good night of sleep tonight, and it surely wouldn't be Dean.

He might just never sleep again.

His thoughts had been half stuck on that conversation with Cas ever since it happened, those words ringing around his head and now where there was no case to focus on his mind was zeroing in on nothing else but Cas' confession.

"I'm afraid I might kill myself."

And Dean had let him stay behind in that old people's home of death.

On the day after Cas had sat on this very bed he was now lying on and had told Dean he was afraid of hurting himself, Dean had turned his back on him and walked away. Of course Cas had wanted to stay behind a little still but should Dean have really listened to him? Shouldn't he have insisted on Cas not being alone right now? Shouldn't he had offered to remain behind even if that place gave him the absolute creeps?

His stomach curled into knots and he sat up when his chest was pulling so tight that he couldn't breathe easy anymore. What if Cas had by now decided to skip town? What if he had gone and pulled a disappearance act again and then was alone when his thoughts spiraled down for good? What if he got down enough that he decided to go to Heaven and Dean wouldn't know? What option was worse to imagine, Dean couldn't even decide, Cas hurt by the angels or Cas hurt by his own hand?

Should Dean have insisted on taking Cas' blade before leaving him behind with Fred?

But then again, Cas was still an angel, he was a warrior and a soldier, if he wanted to he would find a way... and yes, no more sleep tonight for one Dean Winchester.

Sighing deeply, Dean put on his pants again and slipped into shoes and jacket before quietly leaving the room. He made sure to close the door as silently as possible and then walked over to Baby, the parking lot was maybe half full with cars but empty of people this late, there was barely a light on in the surrounding buildings. He pulled a beer from the cooling box on Baby's backseats and then sat himself down on the hood, leaned back to watch the stars.

Was there ever a point where one could find a way to get used to losing people?

Or was that the moment you stopped feeling anything all together?

Dean had thought to have lost Cas so many times already that he had almost lost count of it already, and still his mind was going into panic mode now where he was spinning through all the possible scenarios how he could lose Cas another time. And maybe it was because he had grown more and more able to stop Cas, or at least have the potential for it.

When Cas had died for the first time on the day Lucifer had been freed from the Cage, Dean had been far away, and he couldn't have stood against an Archangel anyway. He had only known of it later, stood there in Chuck's living room while Chuck pulled one of Cas' teeth from his hair but Dean's mind had been too numb with shock to really feel anything.

When Lucifer had killed Cas on Stull Cemetery, everything had been happening so fast that Dean hadn't been able to feel anything, the Apocalypse was at the tip of their finger. Once his mind had snapped back into his own head and given him time to think, Cas had been already been back again, setting his fingers to Dean's head to heal him. 

Then the Leviathans, and that had already hurt because there had been time to process it, because there had been time to mourn him, starting at that moment where Dean had held the trenchcoat in his hands on the edge of the lake. It had taken months until he had gotten Cas back, only to lose him again in parts right away.

And then Dick Roman and Purgatory and searching for Cas day and night, sending prayers every single second he could think straight outside of fighting, imagining the terrible things that could have happened to an angel in that disgusting place. But he had found Cas again, one plagued by guilt and despair but he had found Cas and they were gonna get out.

Only they hadn't.

And that one had hurt the most.

Even with what Dean knew now about Cas' pennance intentions.

He had held Cas' hand in his, standing there in that portal, and he had felt the loss of every single finger slipping out of his grip before the portal had torn him away.

And left Cas behind.

And what came next had just been grief. Grief and guilt and blaming. 

For months, Dean had thought he had killed Cas,if not actively than at least passively by abandoning him to his own fate with the Leviathans. Night after night he had laid awake, unable to quieten the raging thoughts of "you left him there, you bastard, he is dead because of you." Hours he had spent wondering what he could have done different, how he could have not lost Cas.

It had even been worse than in Purgatory, there he had still had hope to find Cas, hope that his best friend was still alive and just kept somewhere where Dean could save him from. Once that pit of special hell had spit him out again and he had said goodbye to Benny, Dean had sat down before his knees could have buckled beneath him and the realization that Cas was gone had crashed over him like a hammer to the gut.

There was no hoping then. No 'just one more day of looking then I'll have him.'

Cas had been gone.

What two Archangels hadn't been able to achieve, what being possessed by Leviathans hadn't been able to achieve, Dean's slippery grap had.

Cas had been dead.

Only it hadn't stuck again, Cas had long since joined the club of dead men walking, and that moment in the motel bathroom a good week ago had been by far one of the happiest moments of Dean's life. He had failed him and now he could make it better.

That was... until Cas told him about his suicidal tendencies, and here back on Baby in the parking lot, Dean dragged a hand down his face and hen angrily wiped over the few tears that had fallen. Knowing that Cas was thinking about it, that he actually had that thought in his head, it was worse than all the times he had lost him put together.

Slow anticipation. Dean had always hated that.

He needed to do something.

But what?

Cas was drowning in guilt, blaming himself for something that had happened more than a year ago, when he had been out of control under too much power. Maybe he should nudge Sam in Cas' direction, he knew how it felt like to be possessed by too much power.

And that brought up a whole other can of worms.

Had Sam ever felt like that? Had Sam ever wanted to end it all because of guilt?

How much had slipped out of Dean's focus because he had been set on the bigger picture?

God, he needed to do something.

All of them had made mistakes. All of them had gotten people killed and Cas just hadn't been himself, he had that over Dean and Sam as well.

He needed Cas to understand that they were family and that they would get through this together because that was what family did, held together, good and bad times.

"Dean?"

Just so managing to bite back a scream, Dean still wasn't able to prevent the jump his body gave and him consequently nearly sliding down Baby's hood if a hand hadn't quickly reached for his arm.  
"God, Cas, give a man some warning." He grumbled but also slid to the side to make room for the angel to sit down next to him, Cas did after some more looks were exchanged. "Got bored with Fred?" 

"You were praying, Dean."

Oh.

Fuck.

"Shit," Dean cursed out loud as well and then looked over to Cas who was looking up at the stars, "how much did you hear?" He wanted to know and knew right away that it had been too much when Cas wouldn't look at him. "Look, man, I'm sorry but... when your best friend tells you he wants to kill himself, you're not exactly shrugging that off."  
"I shouldn't have told you," Cas said quietly and Dean gritted his teeth to keep from interrupting him right away, "it only worried you."

"It worried me because it's supposed to worry me." Dean spoke up when the opening was there and he poked at Cas' arm until blue eyes looked at him. "I need you to know that you can talk to me. Or us, if you feel more comfortable with Sam but don't just bottle it all up."  
"You do," Cas had the comeback right at hand and Dean winced, realizing that it might have actually been him who had taught Cas to keep things secret.   
"And how is that working out for me?" Dean asked him and Cas turned his gaze away again, "Look, I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean to unload my head on you. But what are you expecting? You tell me you want to off yourself and I'm not supposed to go a little mental with imagining things?"

"Dean, I..."

"No, you know what," Dean interrupted him then and made a quick decision whose origin he wasn't so sure for, but it was long overdue. They hadn't had this kind of conversation outside of Purgatory yet but Dean was maybe just getting sick of not having Cas see him the way he saw the angel. "You're gonna listen now and I will talk. You're family, Cas, you're my best fucking friend. We've been to Hell and back, as literally as that can get. I saw you die, snapped out of existence by the fucking Devil himself. For months I thought I had abandoned you to hell of Purgatory and Leviathans on the prowl! Do you wanna know how many times I woke up at night from nightmares where I saw them rip you apart?"

"That's not how..."

"Do you think I care about the specifics? What mattered was that I thought for like what... the fifth, the sixth time that I thought I had lost you? Raphael, your stunt to let me escape Zachariah, Lucifer, Leviathans, your own bloody mind and then Leviathan again. Against all of those I was powerless, but now I'm not. I will not sit by and watch you drown in that guilt any longer. I can't afford to lose you, Cas. Not again." And once that emotional rant was over, Dean slipped from the hood to get himself another beer, intending to grab one for Cas as well.

As he returned up front again though, the beer was entirely forgotten when he found Cas with his knees drawn up to his chest and his face buried in one hand, shoulders twitching.

"Fuck... Cas, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..." Unable to figure out what he wanted to say Dean just stopped talking, set the beers down on the ground and then climbed back onto the hood. Despite large parts of him protesting the motion, he still knew what he had to do, chick flick moment or not, he was too terrified by his own thoughts still. "Come here," he whispered and already began wrapping his arms around Cas, drawing him close. "You're not alone. We all made mistakes, and we all paid for them but we can't give up. Heaven might crap on you but I don't, and Sam doesn't either. You have friends here, family."

"I did so many terrible things," Cas sobbed quietly against his shoulder and Dean leaned his chin down until it touched the top of Cas' head.  
"Sam and I can sign up to that club, too. We all fucked up, Cas, but we also did pretty awesome things. Preventing the Apocalypse takes the cake on that other list." Dean proposed in more uplifting topics, as stupid as that might sound.

"I barely did anything for..."

"Are you kidding me?" Dean protested immediately and gently pushed Cas away just enough to look him in the eyes, red rimmed tear filled eyes, "do we remember different stories here? Who told me about the tether between Archangels and Prophets? Who sacrificed himself so I could try and stop Sam kill Lilith? The whole time travelling thing? Throwing holy fire at fucking Michael just so I could try and talk Sammy into taking over Lucifer again? Your entire fucking Rebellion against Heaven, man! And I'm probably forgetting half of what you've done in those two starting years. We couldn't have done it without you, man, and we never gave you the appreciation for it that you should have gotten."

And wasn't that a shitty realization, too.

"All this time you must have thought you were so alone. Abandoned by a shitty Father, cast out by asshole angel brothers. But you never were alone, you had us! Sam and me, and Bobby back then still, too. Jo and Ellen. You have a family here, man, and we don't want to lose you." Dean was aware that this had long since passed over into that dangerous territory of feeling talks but Cas had told him he wanted to kill himself and he couldn't stop playing that moment out all over and over again in his mind.

Cas remained silent again, he looked so exhausted and tired, and Dean had only seen him like that in Purgatory. They had found out the hard way there that Cas' mojo had been running on empty when he had collapsed one night. Dean wondered if it was the guilt that was wearing him down now.

"Do you wanna go lie down?" He asked hence and Cas blinked at him where he had gone back to staring at the stars. "I don't think I can sleep tonight, man. I'll watch over you." And Dean had no fucking idea why he said that last part but it sure as hell prompted Cas' lips to tick up into a brief amused smile.

"I think I'd welcome lying down tonight."

And that decided that then, Dean let go of Cas and they both slipped down from the hood, Dean grabbed the beer and locked Baby again before they ventured into the motel room. Dean got comfortable at the small table while Cas took off trenchcoat, jacket and shoes before lying down on Dean's bed, Sam slept on.

"Dean?" Cas asked when he was already under the covers and Dean had powered up Sam's laptop again, there would be something to keep his mind occupied to get away from going crazy. He looked over to Cas who looked so fucking small and vulnerable under the white sheets. "I'd like to talk. If not to you, then I'll ask Sam, but thank you."

"Always, man, always."

This wasn't the solution.

It wasn't the miracle button that made everything suddenly better.

But as Cas closed his eyes after they exchanged goodnights, Dean could lean back in his chair and observe his sleeping brother and his best friend without feeling like he was vibrating out of his skin in worry and gutwrenching fear. Cas was willing to talk, it was a start and Dean was gonna take it because it was win, and they had precious little of that recently.

\--

A good two hours later when he had raided the internet to the point of boredom, made a list of some possible cases to tackle next, Dean found himself actually nodding off at the desk. He was suddenly tired and exhausted, his mind pleasantly quiet of any dark thoughts. Cas was here, Sammy was here, the room was as safe as it could get.

With his brothers spread out over the bed like an octopus, Dean pulled his chair over to the bed where Cas was either sleeping or just meditating or such. He kicked his shoes off and then settled himself down on the chair with his legs stretched out on the bed.

They had some set backs but Team Free Will was back on the road.


End file.
